


A Fun Sex Adventure

by therapychicken



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: ...the next thing I write will show Patrick as the generally wonderful person he is, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Communication, David POV, I promise, Lack of Communication, M/M, Post-Episode: s06e06 The Wingman, no actual sex in the fic despite the title, so it turns out sitcom misunderstandings aren't really a foundation for a healthy marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:54:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26268307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therapychicken/pseuds/therapychicken
Summary: "David had thought that knowing each other well enough to decide to, like, spend the rest of their lives together would mean developing that weird mental telepathy thing that his parents had or something- not needing to have these awkward conversations after the fact because you’ve already known from the start what the other is thinking. But apparently, you don’t develop mental telepathy til you’ve been married long enough that you’re gray and wrinkled and no longer in a position to be propositioned for threesome/orgy situations, so what’s the point?"David and Patrick have a long talk after the events of The Wingman. It's sort of about the threesome thing, but not really.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 20
Kudos: 101





	A Fun Sex Adventure

“Well, that was-” 

Patrick plops himself down on the couch, flopping his head down in the back. He looks like he’s about to put his feet up on the coffee table and then hesitates. 

It’s that moment of hesitation that makes David burst out with, “well that was what, exactly?”

Patrick flushes, and his damn shirt is so tight that David can practically see the flush going all the way down between the buttons straining on his chest. He could probably easily rip- hm, if that had even been what Patrick had wanted with that shirt. From him. 

Dammit, they really do actually need to talk. 

David had thought that knowing each other well enough to decide to, like, spend the rest of their lives together would mean developing that weird mental telepathy thing that his parents had or something- not needing to have these awkward conversations after the fact because you’ve already known from the start what the other is thinking. But apparently, you don’t develop mental telepathy til you’ve been married long enough that you’re gray and wrinkled and no longer in a position to be propositioned for threesome/orgy situations, so what’s the point? 

Patrick is still kind of purple. “I don’t know! What do you think that was?” He seems to be determinedly looking anywhere but at David’s face or that goddamn coffee table, and now is carefully examining the plaster grain of the ceiling. 

David sits down at the kitchen table, his fingers tapping impatiently. They do need to talk, because this has happened so many times, something happens and one of them fills in their own reasons for why it happened and gets upset and they’ve nearly _broken up_ over that, and now they’re supposed to be _getting married_. 

Their communication really is shit, and it’s occurring to David that maybe the mental telepathy is what happens to couples after they’ve spent a long enough time talking through things with their mouths. 

He turns around, suddenly, swivels his seat in his chair to face Patrick, because he doesn’t want to live in a world where this isn’t fixable somehow. “Okay, so,” he says, and Patrick quickly turns his head toward David, looking terrified. “So whatever happened tonight, we both did it, right?” 

Patrick stills, as though he’s thinking quickly, and he nods. He still looks abjectly terrified. 

David considers waiting for him to say something, but has mercy. “So both of us did it, which means it’s neither of our faults, right? Seeing as this is a situation where if one of us had done it the only other person being harmed is the other one, it stands to reason that if we both did it then it balances out. Right?” 

He really hopes that that’s how it works, but maybe if he says it he can will it into being. 

Patrick is still thinking, and suddenly he half-smiles, and David feels a sense of overwhelming relief, because that’s Patrick’s I-know-things-seem-fucked-up-but-they’re-going-to-be-fine smile. He says, “so what you’re suggesting is a general amnesty?”

“Yes! Yes, that’s it. We each kind of explain ourselves, learn from it for the future, and never- never have to talk about it again.”

It had all sounded so good in his head, but something sits weirdly in his stomach as Patrick nods eagerly. It’s not really a strong enough feeling to worry about, though. For now, they’ve implemented amnesty. That’s good.

Now he has to, like, explain himself. Less fun. 

He can see that Patrick is making the same realization in his head; his half-smile is gone and his eyes are panicked. David makes a quick decision. “Okay,” he sighs as he gets up from his chair. “We wanted whiskey, let’s have some whiskey.” He grabs an open bottle and two glasses from the cabinet and makes his way to the couch, and can feel Patrick watching him the whole time. He sets the bottle and glasses on the fucking coffee table with a clang as he sits down. 

With a sudden pang, he misses the old coffee table immensely. It had had so many good memories attached to it- one too many, as it happened, and cracked under the strain, but still. He wouldn’t have been self conscious just putting things down on the old table. Aroused, maybe, but not self conscious.

He pours a splash of whiskey into each glass and passes one to Patrick, who takes it almost robotically. “So we are each going to drink this, because we are both so tightly wound right now that we are maybe possibly about to explode. And then we are going to talk about this, non-threateningly and with no lasting consequences.” He doesn’t look around at Patrick to see if he agrees because this needs to happen; he just takes his gulp of whiskey and is so so relieved when he hears, a second later, that Patrick is doing the same. 

The burn in his throat is distracting, but he doesn’t really feel appreciably better. He takes a deep breath, in and out, and turns, finally, to face Patrick. Patrick is swirling the dregs of his whiskey in the bottom of his glass, staring at the glinting of the light in the transparent golden liquid. It’s kind of hypnotic, but David tries to focus. 

He wants to start, to take the pressure off Patrick, but he has this feeling that what he’s going to say isn’t going to make Patrick feel better at first glance. He’ll have to make sure to explain before Patrick can react, or just hope that Patrick summons the courage to speak first. 

Patrick’s still swirling, so no such luck, apparently. David takes another deep breath and says, quickly, “I can start but you have to let me finish what I have to say before you react.”

Patrick looks up from his glass. The panic hasn’t quite left his eyes, but David can tell from the set of his face that he’s trying in his own way to be brave, to do this even though he really doesn’t want to. “Okay,” he says gruffly, the burn of the alcohol roughening his voice, “okay, I’ll do that. Thank you.”

David closes his eyes- that will make this easier. “I have had threesomes before. You know that. Not that many, but a few, over the years, with a bunch of different kinds of people. And they’re- they’re good. You can imagine.” 

He can hear a rustling, like maybe Patrick is nodding. He wishes he could see Patrick’s face, so he does, he opens his eyes and sees that Patrick has reddened just a bit. 

“I mean, there’s the potential to- to do more stuff. So that’s pretty great. But anyway. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether you’re with one or two or twenty other people- it really doesn’t. None of that compares to having that one person who you- who you love, and who loves you, and you know each other and all the different ways to make each other feel good. None of that compares, and you have to already know that I think that. I don’t need anything more than what we have.” 

“I know, David.” Patrick says it softly, and it makes David feel like he made the right choice, trying to frame it this way. Patrick also looks a bit confused, though. David sighs.

“It’s not that I particularly wanted a threesome. But- but it seemed like you were receptive, like you were into it when Jake was flirting with you, and you should know what it’s like if-” and shit, Patrick looks like he’s about to open his mouth. He thinks this is about Ken. 

“It’s not about Ken,” he says quickly, and Patrick shuts his mouth. “It’s about- it’s about giving you all of that, with me. I couldn’t just do another anonymous threesome now, with people I don’t care about. I could do it if you were there because I would know that it would be good for me, I trust that you’d help make it good for me. Other people, back in the day, they weren’t quite so careful; I know you would be. And I figured, if you did want that, us being there, together, you would be that for me and I would be that for you. It could be an experience we would share together and we’d be there for each other. So it’s- it’s not about Ken.” 

That soft space between Patrick’s beautiful eyes is crinkled, as though he’s trying to sort that particular bit of verbal diarrhea into something that makes sense. “So what you’re saying is- you’re saying that it’s not about Ken because it was always going to be about us, together, not you basically forcing me into going out with a random stranger.” David bristles to hear it described quite like this- after all he’s been doing to try to deescalate, it’s pretty frustrating. But he can feel Patrick falling a little closer to him, leaning in his direction on the couch, and hears him say, “I think that makes sense. A fun sex adventure we would do together.” 

“Yes, exactly.”

“Because you thought I wanted it…” Patrick’s voice is a bit more careful now, like he’s trying to tease meaning out of David’s words. 

“I- I- yes, I thought you wanted it,” David says exasperatedly, now, because this doesn’t feel like them talking about themselves, now, this feels like him just opening himself up and shaking his component parts so that they scatter across the floor, and Patrick watching him do it. He can’t hold back anymore- “ _did_ you want it?!” 

“Did _you_ want it, David? Or did you only want to do it because you thought I wanted it?”

“ _I asked you first!”_

David hadn’t meant to shout that. It just comes out, not that loudly but forcefully enough that Patrick cringes and shrinks back. After a breath he crumples, covers his face in his hands, and David hates whatever part of himself has made Patrick feel like this. He’s about to say something- say anything to apologize- when from behind Patrick’s hands he hears something muffled. 

As gently as possible, David says, “I’m sorry, I can’t hear what you’re saying.”

Patrick picks his head up off his hands, looks at David, and says, “I don’t know. Shit, David, I don’t know what I wanted. If I wanted it. It was all so- so-” 

Patrick is frustrated. David deeply, intimately recognizes this frustration; he hasn’t seen much of it for a year or so, but it’s an old friend. He says softly, “you know, it’s okay to want it.”

“Well- maybe, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to go ahead and _do_ it, is it.”

David shrugs. “Sure, but we’re not up to that yet. Just up to the wanting it.” He’s starting to piece this together, and he thinks that the other bit will need to be a separate thing.

“Well, I mean,” Patrick seems to be frantically searching for words that he doesn’t have- he’s not particularly good at this, David knows that- “I kind of wanted it, right? Like, for sure in the abstract. You know. Jake is hot. And obviously you- I’d have sex with you in literally any time or place or situation, so that wasn’t actually a question.” 

David can’t help himself- he smiles. He says, “well, I mean, that’s not quite what your list of store rules says,” and Patrick snorts with his own small smile on his face and David says _score!_ in his head. 

Patrick is a little bit less jittery as he continues, “and, I mean, you. You seemed so- disgruntled, but also into it? It was really cute, and really funny, and that combined with the whole situation made it kind of- exciting. Interesting. And then you said your whole thing about Jake being the person you’d go to if we did want to- you know, and it kind of snowballed, I guess. It was like, you know like in camp-”

“No, I do not,” David says immediately, and Patrick actually laughs, which is so great. 

“Okay, but it’s not just about camp, it’s more that that’s where it first happened to me- so I was in middle school and it was such a silly thing, we wanted a midnight feast and a bunch of guys in my cabin organized a mess hall raid, and the whole time I had this feeling like this was a really stupid thing to do, and risky and not worth it, but also I was having fun, and it would be really good to gorge myself with marshmallows at midnight, right? And we were treating it like this big adventure, and everyone was double-daring each other to do it, so of course I wanted to be a part of it even as I was pretty convinced that it was maybe not the smartest idea.”

David never went to camp, obviously, but he thinks he kind of recognizes the contours of this particular feeling; his had been in high school, when a bunch of his user friends had convinced him that they should break into his parents’ wine cellar. He doesn’t want to distract from the point though, and by now he’s interested- “so did you do it?”

Patrick laughs. “Yeah, I did. We thought we were being really smart about it- we wore all black and covered our faces with mud so that we’d blend into the shadows, and we went barefoot so that we wouldn’t make any noise, but then it turns out when you walk barefoot outdoors in the dark you risk stepping on stuff, and so this particular outing ended with Joey Michaels going to the infirmary to get some very sharp rocks removed from his foot and the rest of us having to try to explain why we were covered in dirt and out at 11PM.”

David can’t help but wince at that image. Just the ordinary parts of camp sounded bad enough without taking skin-embedded gravel and _dirt on your face on purpose_ into account. 

“But anyway… it’s about, kind of, the adrenaline. Wanting to be part of something, to do something, and thinking it’s maybe not a good idea but wanting to do it anyway because maybe it is. It’s like a game, it’s like playing chicken with yourself and not being sure if you’re going to stop.”

“And playing chicken with me, too, really.”

Patrick’s eyebrows rise. “Oh, well- actually yeah, I guess there was that. There was a kind of a- competitive aspect to it. Upping the ante, seeing how you’d respond, who would cry uncle first- if someone did at all. It was kind of fun, actually. Speaking of which, do you really hate this shirt?”

David does in fact have some very strong opinions about this shirt, but hate is not quite the word for them. That said, this isn’t really the time to explore those opinions to his satisfaction, so he shakes his head. “I will really enjoy taking it off you, but that’s not the point right now. The point is that- it sounds like we both kind of wanted it, and wanted whatever it was we did to be together, and took each other into account. So I’m officially declaring both of us off the hook for this particular incident.”

David can see Patrick’s face slacken in relief. “Good. That’s good. That sounds right,” he says quickly. He takes another sip of the whiskey. 

“Yeah,” David responds, and takes another sip- actually more of a healthy gulp- of whiskey himself, because he’s pretty sure that they’ve only done the easier half of the conversation so far. 

With a clink, Patrick puts his glass down on that goddamned coffee table. “You know, if you really hate looking at me in this shirt so much, I can definitely be talked into taking it off.” He says it faux casually, relaxed, the kind of comfortable flirting you do when you know exactly what response you’re going to get. 

And _god,_ David would love to give that response, so bad, just lean over to Patrick and rip that shirt off hard enough that those fucking buttons just ricochet around the room and let events unfold from there. Pretend that this is all they need to talk about and bury everything else for later. 

But he can’t. He knows he can’t. 

As much as he _desperately_ wants them never to speak of any of this again... 

He shuts his eyes tight before saying, “actually… I think we need to talk about something else first?” He can hear and feel rather than see Patrick’s sigh, his movement as he settles back into the couch cushions. 

He opens his eyes to see Patrick looking at him balefully. “What more is there to talk about? You just said it- amnesty, we’re both good.” 

“Yes, but- but don’t you think maybe we should have talked about this _before_ we went out for a whiskey, rather than after?”

He can hear his voice go a bit pitchy at the end, and Patrick bites his lip. “Well, I mean, before, after, same difference- everything was fine…”

“And don’t you think that we got pretty lucky with that? Because first of all we both had the right intentions and things to say, which good for us, but also we _didn’t go through with it_ . What if we- or just one of us- _had_ done it? And then we’d come back here? Do you think the after-the-fact conversation would have gone quite as well?”

David can see Patrick’s face go ashen. He’s worrying his bottom lip with his teeth, and he has a crease deeply indented between his eyebrows. He doesn’t seem to be about to say anything. 

David decides to go for a bit of a softer approach than his prior screeching. “Look, everything is good now, it is, but you know your whole ‘it’s fine to want it but is it fine to do it’ thing from before? At some point we’re going to have to figure out if it is fine to do it, and I just- I just think it would be better for all concerned if we figure that out _before_ it becomes relevant. Or we’ll be having this whole conversation again, but like ten times worse.”

“But do we have to do that now?!” Patrick asks plaintively; David would almost call it whiny if he weren’t trying to be patient right now. “I mean, this was already hard enough just now-”

“But that’s my point! It is really hard, we both find it really hard to talk about this kind of thing, about things that make us uncomfortable. But we kind of need to start, I think? And not just about, you know, sex and threesomes and things like that. Just generally being open and honest even if we don’t really want to be, if it’s important for us as a couple.”

Patrick groans. “Ugh. I mean, I hate talking about this stuff- do you think we’re that bad?”

“Um, yes. And you think I _like_ it? God, I never used to talk about my feelings, ever. Why do you think I became friends with Stevie? We both hate being real- it happens maybe once a year. But somehow I managed to get engaged to someone even more allergic to talking about uncomfortable things than I am-”

“I don’t know that I’d say al-”

David can’t help as his pitch escalates. “You _lied to my face_ when I sat down on the mattress protector after the- incident. You lied to my face when I asked if your parents knew about us. You spent four months not telling me that your former fiance was texting you, or that you even had a former fiance.” Patrick puts his head in his hands with a groan. “Need I go on?”

“No, you really don’t…”

“Even more allergic, I say- but I know we need to talk about this kind of stuff if we want to stay together, and I wouldn’t be planning our _wedding_ if I didn’t want to stay together for a long fucking time, I want to grow old with you, and so I want to suck it up and make you have these uncomfortable conversations, okay? Because look, we are really good at loving each other but apparently shit at communicating, so we’re, like, relying on the fact that we love each other and we want this to work to fix stuff when things go wrong. But it terrifies me to think that one day, we’ll let something stupid go so far and get so bad that the fallout will be too much and loving each other won’t be enough for us to fix it.”

Patrick gapes at him. “You don’t think it will come to that.”

“I hope not! But I kind of don’t want to take any risks, not with you or all of this.”

Patrick sags against the couch cushions, looking gobsmacked. David can see why; generally, when he expresses fears about them breaking up, it’s about him doing something wrong and Patrick breaking up with him. He basically knows that those fears are irrational by now. David doesn’t think, though, that he’s _ever_ expressed a fear that they just… would break up. That they’d drift apart, mutually realize that it wasn’t working in some way. He especially doesn’t think he’s really considered the possibility that _he_ might have a reason to break up with _Patrick_ , ever. He’d maybe come close around Rachel-gate, and Patrick had probably been afraid that David would dump him then, but David hadn’t truly considered it. And it’s not like David is considering breaking up with Patrick now, fuck no, but-

But couples really do break up when they don’t communicate. When misunderstandings escalate, when alienation leads them to drift apart… It’s a thing that happens, even if it seems really hard to imagine now- and that can’t happen, because fuck no, David is _not_ considering breaking up with Patrick.

David imagines, for a second, what it would have been like if they’d sat down before they’d gotten engaged and talked about having kids. It seems crazy now that they hadn’t, but maybe it was valid, that Patrick knew David’s opinion on it, very strongly, and had proposed anyway, and so David shouldn’t have worried. Maybe they would have been fine either way, but if they’d talked about it, on purpose, David would have been spared a good two hours of nailbiting and freaking out and wondering if they could get the several hundred dollars back on Patrick’s tuxedo even after it had already been tailored just in case this was the thing that would make Patrick finally dump him. 

“We can’t each keep _guessing_ what the other one is thinking, is the thing,” David says finally. “We can’t hide things and just assume everything will be okay when it comes out in the heat of the moment. We need to be open and honest. When we have a question about each other, we should ask it, and know that what the other person says will be the whole truth. When we’re not sure what the other person is thinking, we should say so. I know there was something about the whole thing today that felt… sexy and fun, the not knowing, but I just don’t think it’s sustainable as a general thing, and it could have really backfired.”

Patrick is looking at him, and is still kind of wide eyed, but considering. All of a sudden his eyes soften, and look sad, almost, and David is confused because he has no idea what is going through Patrick’s mind right now and can only hope that Patrick has taken the words he said three seconds ago to heart and is going to tell him. Patrick looks at him seriously and sadly and says, “you’ve never lied to me, David.”

David freezes. What is he supposed to respond to _that_? Like, he hasn’t, as far as he knows, if anything brutal honesty is one of his failings, but- 

Before he can summon the words to respond to this bewildering statement, Patrick continues quietly, “you keep saying that we need to be honest, and I know that you’ve never been anything but honest, and you’re sparing my feelings, which is a really sweet thing to do but I’m sorry that you feel like it’s necessary. I’m- I’m sorry in general, about the- the hiding things. The lying. You don’t deserve it, you never have. I shouldn’t have done it.” 

David has to swallow around a lump in his throat, because as much as he knows he’s supposed to demur and say that it’s not what he meant at all and it’s not a big deal, it is, in fact, a big fucking deal that Patrick is saying this to him. “Thank you,” he chokes out, and all of a sudden he just wants to touch Patrick, who is just sitting there carefully, looking at him and waiting, so he realizes that he has to be the one to reach out to him. 

When he puts his arms around Patrick, and Patrick collapses into them, it feels like a release. Neither of them cry- David doesn’t know about Patrick, but he personally feels almost too worn out to cry, even if he were so inclined. They just hold each other, like people who are choosing each other. Like people who love each other deeply and for whom that’s generally been enough. 

“I just think that being honest is trust,” he says into the hollow of Patrick’s neck. “It means that I trust you and you trust me, that we both have the power to make everything okay for each other before the catastrophe happens.”

“Yes,” Patrick breathes into David’s own neck, the vibrations of his voice rumbling across David’s skin. “Yes yes yes yes yes.”

It’s a good feeling, and it makes David almost instinctively press a kiss into Patrick’s shoulder. Patrick groans, and all of a sudden he’s kissing up David’s neck, pushing down until David is lying with his head on the couch armrest and Patrick is kissing David’s face and whispering “yes, I love you, yes, I trust you,” and finally, finally kissing David’s mouth and maybe Patrick had been crying just a bit because David can taste a little salt but anyway they’re kissing, deeply and getting deeper, and Patrick is clutching him and mouthing at him like he can't let go, and David sinks inexorably into it until he has almost forgotten what they were in the middle of. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you're wondering, I consciously did not include in the list of Patrick's omissions that he didn't tell David about the bedwetting video, because, in my imagining, he kind of still hasn't told him about that, so David doesn't actually know. 
> 
> Will he? Who knows? This is definitely not going to be the last time this subject comes up.
> 
> (Also, I COMPLETELY FORGOT that today is their canonical anniversary until after posting, so my apologies for posting angst on such a happy day!)
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, and as the old chestnut goes, let me know what you think in the comments and wear a mask and save lives!


End file.
